Borak: The All-In-One Madness

I hate to stretch the hype anymore than it's necessary, but I have to mention the iPhone. So it came, on June 29 to much applause, though not the kind that greeted Paris Hilton’s “unveiling” (or her going off to jail for that matter), as some Mac fans anticipated. The buzz, however, did cause me to think about how much of these “cool” products we actually need—a topic that found me at wits' end with my brother at dinner. “Whether or not it's a good product isn't the point,” he said. “What's important is that you come across as a guy who's modern, cool, and keeping up with the times.”

No doubt the iPhone is slick, innovative, and drool-worthy. But while Steve Jobs promised an experience combining "an incredibly great cell phone", "the best iPod we've ever made", and "the Internet in your pocket", there has been voices of dissent. PC Magazine, for one, hammers home the point that I'm getting into: the iPhone is a great iPod. But it’s mediocre as anything else.

It's disturbing that our communications devices are packing in more functions than we need, resulting in an all-in-one sum that somehow is less than the gadget’s primary function—bogged down with flawed secondary functions. And the increasingly commonplace development of these all-in-one products makes me worried about the dangers of media overload. There's so much media—video, web, music, email, SMS—being crammed into our devices. Media convergence, my ass. More like junk in my inbox.

Now that you have a computer in your pocket, you can email, surf, and phone—which means that wherever you go, the office goes with you. So what happens? The office life encroaches into hours spent outside—whether you're out to lunch, dinner, family picnics on a Sunday, etc. Gone are the days when lunch was lunch and you could leave the office without getting an beep from your boss asking you where the paperclips are.

This “always ON” mentality is going to get more intense with more functions in our communications devices. It started with mobile calls. Then came along SMS, which was like having someone sticking Post-It notes on your mobile. Now, with email function, it's like having an office assistant calling you about every email coming in, each demanding immediate attention! Because it's all marked URGENT!

Whether or not you read the email isn't the point. The point is since you’ve received the email, you're now responsible for reading and replying to it. After all, there’s no reason that you shouldn’t have gotten the email, right? “Hey, so did you get my email or not? So why you no answer it ah? Battery mati already ah? But I thought yours can last one week on a single charge?” This kind of always-connected mentality, if it continues unchecked, will leave us on edge, like we’re some kind of server that’s always online 24/7. Yes, that’s what billions of years of evolution has led us: machines.

And what about these so-called functionalities? Yeah, so you can surf the web on iPhone, but wouldn't web surfing work better (and faster) on a PC than a small phone? The same goes with movies—they work better on a 42-inch screen than a 4-inch screen, and while a music player bundled into your phone sounds like a good idea, I'd rather have a 30GB iPod with its own dedicated 12-hour battery life. In other words, hey, if you want a computer, get a computer. If you need an MP3 player, get an iPod or a Creative Zen. Leave the phone out of it.

The problem is that these added functions are marketed as cool things to have—to hell with whether or not they're practical, if they even work. The manufacturers of these status symbols are asking you to spend more money for a bunch of technology you don't even need or use. In the case of Apple, they've led some fanboys to believe that it's the perfect product and any delay, fault, overpriced payment plan is forgiveable because “It's an Apple”. What's more dangerous is the increasingly common perception that you need all these cool functions. In five years when email becomes a common function on my mobile—and you know it's coming—we're all doomed to having the office with us.

What we need to do is dis-integrate these products—and concentrate on making each separate function great as its own device. In the world of media overload, it's important to hand consumers the power to customise according to their wants, instead of being sold bundled “conveniences” that spreads our attention span across so many thingamajigs that we start multitasking on our nights out at Zouk. Get a life, people!

John Lim isn't going to buy an iPhone, but it's a different matter if it's free.